I don’t know why I should be surprised, but the comments from France’s Confederation Generale du Travail (CGT) union this week, were, well, breathtaking.
And that’s even by this union’s tough standards. The CGT sets the competitive bar pretty high when it comes to its radical, hardline, uncompromising, unyielding hostility to the capitalist way of running things, even in France with its current Socialist government.
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So its reaction to me concerning PSA’s latest attempts to restructure its operations and return to profitability, this time in cahoots with the unlikely pairing of Chinese partner Dongfeng and the French government, genuinely took me by surprise.
In a time of great austerity in France, when its public finances are incredibly stretched, its tax base hit by a double whammy of massive unemployment north of three million and the State having to dig into its pockets to fund those benefits, the CGT has decided to launch its own astonishing broadside against its political masters.
You would have thought France’s decision – led by its powerful Finance and Economic Redevelopment Ministers Pierre Moscovici and Arnaud Montebourg – to pump EUR800m (US$1.1bn) into PSA with a similar amount from Dongfeng – would have the CGT lauding the Socialist government from the rooftops and praising the injection as a prime example of Statist intervention to aid ailing businesses.
Well, it’s fair to say they weren’t exactly singing the Internationale in celebration.
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By GlobalDataDespite that EUR800m being no small beer and it coming at a hugely challenging period of economic difficulties, the CGT’s reaction was apoplectic.
I spoke to one of its most charismatic leaders – union delegate Jean-Pierre Mercier – a man seemingly never off French television screens and whose implacable resistance to anything smacking of capitalism seems to belong to era of 20th century politics more akin to the Soviet Union than 21st Century France.
Where do you start? Well, I began by asking Mercier, was he surprised, pleasantly so, by Paris’ decision to pump in such a vast amount of public money into PSA?
“I am not surprised, I am scandalised, he told me. “[The] government has said the coffers are empty and they are increasing taxes on the population, especially workers.
“Now they approve the means to put EUR800m into the coffers, into a 100% private [company]. “A guarantee for shareholders, but not for workers.”
That was quite a start but Mercier soon warmed to his theme, using the language straight from the hard left manual, dropping in phrases such as: “The only way to protect against redundancy…is to struggle collectively. We have informed the workers we are in the middle of [a] struggle…that the State stops redundancies and says to PSA to stop redundancies.”
The CGT has form here with its bitter fight to stop PSA shuttering its Aulnay plant and the axing of up to 8,000 jobs as it fights to return to an even keel – admirable union activities – but which were seized on by Mercier with extraordinary zeal.
“Production is still paralysed, the strike has energy and force and we will continue until we obtain satisfaction,” he said of the four-month walk out estimated to have cost PSA around 40,000 vehicles.
“If the management really does not propose an acceptable agreement, of course we will make surprise actions. It is a combative management that wants to crush workers to protect the profits of its shareholders.”
And so on and so on, the rhetoric always anti-management, but this time with the Paris cash even with an anti – Socialist – government twist.
It’s hard to see what more the French government could have done. Moscovici took to French airwaves last week with a remarkable promise there would not be any more of the automaker’s plant closures in the country – I suppose as a shareholder the State now believes it has real clout in the boardroom – while his colleague Montebourg – himself no stranger to a bit of confrontation – weighed in with his own distinctive language.
“Industrial patriotism” is how Montebourg described the intervention of his government in PSA – a concept as alien as it’s possible to be sat here in northern Europe – but one which enjoyed credence in Mediterranean countries at one stage – and one which appears to be alive and kicking in France.
The CGT still exerts considerable influence in France – witness its involvement in Goodyear’s incredibly protracted dispute at its Amiens Nord plant – but how long will it be able to appeal to its members in a relevant way?
Every time it calls for a strike, it risks its members’ wages, perhaps even their livelihood. And with a Socialist government in situ, you would imagine they would welcome a chance for dialogue with like-minded politicians.
But no: “We can not accept the government opens the valves and [gives] presents to shareholders,” said Mercier. “The State has many means to stop redundancies – this political will does not exist.
“PSA is emptying France of its factories – when you close one line of production in Mulhouse and Poissy [for example], that is the equivalent of one factory.”
President Francois Hollande’s polls appear to be a disaster, some speculate they could now be as low as 19%.
If France kicks its current government out in 2017 elections, who will the CGT be able to talk to then in any new administration? If it reacts in the way it does now to a friendly power, how on earth will they talk to Conservative forces?
Even those French Conservatives – whose rightist politicians sometimes evoke an era of Gaullist glory themselves that – to ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ears might smack of left-wing ideology – could baulk at any more “industrial patriotism.”
As an example of increasing French isolationism within Europe that the CGT may or nor be perfectly happy with and how Germany is potentially viewing the UK as a bulwark against Paris’ EU federalism, this week German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will visit the UK, meet the Queen and address both Houses of Parliament, an honour rarely accorded.
A couple of weeks back, President Hollande also visited the UK. Did we roll out the red carpet?
Er, not quite.
He had a pub lunch with David Cameron.
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